Vote your conscience.
Pope Francis weighed in on the U.S. election on Sunday, but he didn’t endorse or criticize either candidate.
“I never say a word about electoral campaigns,” the pope told reporters aboard his plane, according to the National Catholic Reporter. “The people are sovereign. I will only say: Study the proposals well, pray and choose in conscience.”
Although Pope Francis didn’t mention Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton by name, he did say there were “difficulties” with each, Reuters reported. He also warned of the dangers of an electorate becoming too politicized:
“When in any country there are two, three or four candidates who don’t satisfy everyone, it means that perhaps the political life of that country has become too politicized and that it does not have much political culture.
People say ‘I’m from this party’ or ‘I’m from that party,’ but effectively, they don’t have clear thoughts about the basics, about proposals.”
Last week, Pope Francis came out in favor of a push to block the legalization of gay marriage in Mexico, an issue that has the support of Clinton in the United States.
Earlier this year, the pontiff made headlines for saying anyone who wanted to build walls ― such as the one proposed by Trump ― was “not a Christian.”
American conservatives noted that the Vatican was a walled city. However, as The New York Times noted, while the city-state has some walls, it is not enclosed as critics have claimed.
“Anybody can walk into St. Peter’s Square,” Gerard Mannion, a professor of Catholic studies at Georgetown University in Washington, told the newspaper. “That’s the whole point of it.”
